Commodities

Origins & Categories

Commodity refers to any kind of the dozens of object types you can transport in the cargo space of your ship or store in your buildings, measured in an indivisible basic unit: the ton.

The most basic commodities are sometimes called resources. These are the commodities everyone can collect or mine: hydrogen fuel, nebula gas, energy, ore, exotic matter. [MECH:Fields & Mining]. Most other commodities could be labeled luxuries. Usually they are produced out of resources or other less valuable commodities in player-owned buildings. For example, a brewery makes expensive liquor out of cheap energy, water, food, and chemical supplies. [REF:Production Tree][REF:Buildings]

Not only buildings, but also planets and starbases produce certain commodities. On a planet, its class determines those; e.g. a class D planet, a dune planet, produces slaves and needs water, while a class I or ice planet consumes energy but produces lots of water. [REF:Commodities & Planets][TWOP:Planets & Starbases]

There are also commodities which you can only get from accepting jobs at the bulletin boards. These include packages, explosives, or VIPs you may have to transport. [MECH:Missions]

Another type of commodities are those you can only receive in special other places or during special events, such as certain orbiters or exotic crystals. [MECH:Orbiter][MECH:Pardus Sector]

A non-peaceful aquisition of commodities is possible by raiding other the ships or buildings of other players. If done without good reasons, this is usually referred to as piracy. [MECH:Raiding & Ambush]

Uses

The use of most commodities lies in trade. [MECH:Conventional Trade][MECH:Black Market & Dark Corner]
Some commodities however actually have a direct use: taking drugs may give you a certain amount of APs, while utilizing robots can repair a certain amount of your ship's armor. To use them, press [Use] in the cargo window of the nav screen, next to their icons.
Orbiter commodities can be installed on your ship by pressing [Inst]. [MECH:Orbiter]

A number of commodites, like most "end products" - those on the right side of the [REF:Production Tree] - , can be applied for various ingame actions. E.g. for the construction of a building you need metal. To install defense droids, you need droid modules; and so on. [TWOP:Commodities]